Fast and furious: America Fantastica, by Tim O’Brien, reviewed

It’s been said again and again but rarely so plainly illustrated: American life is now too berserk for fiction to keep up. Tim O’Brien’s wild, rollercoaster satire America Fantastica is as wacky as its title suggests; but it can’t compete with the daily trainwreck that calls itself the land of the free and the home of the brave. O’Brien tracks with furious contempt the spread of a highly contagious illness: mythomania and delusional conspiracy theories infecting the body politic and poisoning a defenceless citizenry in the dark pre-Covid days of 2019. The name ‘Trump’ is never mentioned in the novel, but the ‘avalanche of oratorical whoppers’ issuing from the White House is the obvious source of O’Brien’s raging dismay.

The hero (or anti-hero, depending on your tolerance of moral slipperiness) is Boyd Halverson, a compulsive liar struggling mightily to kick the habit, who robs the community bank in a small town in northern California in order to make some changes in his life and shrug off a debilitating bout of lethargy.